


I've Got a Better One

by thelastnorthernlights



Category: House Arrest - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Not Beta Read, Pre-Slash, Teenage Dorks, Teenage Rebellion, prelude to kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelastnorthernlights/pseuds/thelastnorthernlights
Summary: What happened in the van that led to both T.J. and Matt kidnapping their parents.
Relationships: T.J. Krupp/Matt Finley





	I've Got a Better One

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, look, 2020 has been Hard. So my coping mechanism has been re-watching my comfort movies and reading fic. And since House Arrest is 100% one of my comfort movies and there's a woeful lack of fic for it (of which I think I've read ALL of, multiple times), I thought I'd give this a go. Please note, this is the first fic I've written in... *cough*. Well, let's just say it's been awhile. That's probably due to my complete lack of ability to write anything short. Seriously. This was meant to be a 1000-word thing, and here we are, literally nearly 4k later. Ugh, whatever. 
> 
> Given the stress level of 2020, please keep any con-crit to the spelling/grammar level please, and don't come for my weak, wounded underbelly. This year has left me fragile.

“Aw man, I still think I had a good idea,” Finley said as T.J. pulled out of the Beindorf’s driveway.

“Yeah, well, uh, I’ve got a better one.” It was everything T.J. could do to not bubble over with excitement at the plan that had been slowly forming, taking shape in his mind ever since he’d overheard Beindorf and Finley talking in the washroom. He looked back just in time to see a confused look pass over Finley’s face as the van screeched out onto the road, the younger boy’s mouth opening to ask what T.J. was talking about, but before he could get a word out, T.J. reached out and cranked the van’s stereo up to the max, cutting him off. 

He needed to think, and music always helped him do that.

They were halfway across town when suddenly the music cut out, and T.J. let out a groan, smacking the steering wheel with the palm of his hand in frustration. Stupid stereo. He loved his van. And nothing his dad said, nor the worried looks his mom gave it while she wrung her hands in concern would ever make him change his mind. His van was awesome. It was exactly what he’d been looking for. He’d wanted a van exactly like this for literal years, since before he’d even thought about getting his license. But the guy who’d owned it before him hadn’t taken care of it the way he should’ve (especially considering how much money T.J. had shelled out to buy it off him), and so there were a few little hiccups when it came to how the thing worked. Or, in the case of the stereo system, _didn’t work._

“What happened?”

Finley had been sitting there quietly for so long that T.J. had almost forgotten about the freshman sitting next to him. He’d been so lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out just how he was going to pull this whole plan off, that his passenger had basically faded back into the background. T.J. looked over, and when he did, he was surprised to see Finley’s gaze flickering back and forth between T.J. himself and the stereo, and every now and again, to the view quickly passing by them as they sped through town. 

“The van’s last owner cheaped out on the stereo.” T.J. told him, reaching out and giving it one good solid smack, which worked more often than you’d think it would, but, just his luck, this time it didn’t. “It’s busted.”

“That sucks.” There was a pause, which made T.J. think that the dork was done talking, but then, to his surprise, Finley broke the silence once again. “What’s wrong with it?”

“How the heck should I know?” He growled. But then he looked over at Matt and found him shrinking back into his seat, almost curling in on himself and suddenly T.J. wanted to punch the steering wheel again at the wave of frustration bubbling up inside of him. If the dork was scared of him, then he wouldn’t be willing to help him. And honestly, this was going to be a two-man job, getting his parents to Beindorf’s. T.J. couldn’t make him want to run off, not when he still needed him. Because _this_? This was his last-ditch effort to fix whatever the hell was going on with his mom and dad. Because if they don’t get this crap under control, well, T.J. was probably going to end up killing someone. 

Huffing out a sigh—one that he realizes as he’s doing it sounds more like a growl, but, given his current level of frustration that couldn’t be helped—T.J. tightened his grip on the steering wheel and forced the words out through gritted teeth. 

“It keeps cutting out. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. My mechanic has tried to fix it a dozen times, but apparently, it’s just old and needs to be replaced, but he can’t find anything else that’ll fit right.”

And by right, he meant something that T.J. wanted in the van, not what his mechanic wanted to install. The jerk had tried to up-sell him to the fanciest speaker setup in town more than once. At least, he’d tried after he realized that T.J. had money, and lots of it, and wasn’t just some punk kid who’d wandered in off the streets. But that wasn’t what T.J. wanted. He liked his van just the way it was. He didn’t want to put in something that didn’t look right, no matter how good it looked on its own, or how amazing it sounded. Cobbling stuff together like that was how you ended up with his parents' house—his mom's fancy doilies and antiques or whatever, mixed in with his dad’s gleaming new stereo system that probably cost more than the man’s overpriced law degree. It was such a clash of styles, just like his parents. Honestly, their problems were summed up perfectly right there. They didn’t fit. And instead of trying to work together, his dad just ended steamrolling his mom, and that left her trying to fit her own pieces of her life in the space he left behind. 

“Pull over.”

“What?” He glanced over in surprise, and by the looks of it, Finley looked equally flabbergasted that he’d said anything as T.J. had been about hearing it. He could practically see the nerd’s throat working as he swallowed down the lump, but then he tilted his chin up and looked T.J. in the eye… possibly for the first time in his entire life. 

“Pull over,” he said again. “It sounds like an electrical short.”

“So?” Where the hell was the nerd going with this?

“So, I can take a look and let you know if that’s what’s going on,” he explained, and his voice sounded surprisingly calm, given that T.J. could see his pulse jumping along the long line of his throat. “But since I don’t really feel like being electrocuted today, I’d prefer if the car was off while I do it.”

If anyone else had tried ordering him around like that, the odds were pretty good that T.J. would’ve just hauled back and punched them. But there was a strange kind of steel behind the dork’s eyes that made him go “Huh.” And then just… do as the kid asked. 

He yanked the wheel to the right, hard enough to make Matt yelp and go grasping for the door handle to steady himself, butt sliding across his seat, and pulled the van across the right-hand lane—earning a long, angry honk from the car behind him as he cut them off and pulled into the liquor store’s parking lot. 

As soon as the car came to a stop and T.J. turned the engine off, Matt was already digging through his backpack, pulling out—

“Dude why the hell do you have a screwdriver in your backpack?”

Matt blinked up at him, peering at him owlishly through the curtain-fall of his blond hair as if surprised by the question. 

“I like to take things apart?” he said, his voice going high and squeaky at the end. 

T.J. scoffed. “Is that a question or the answer?”

Matt—in a ballsier move than T.J. had been expecting—rolled his eyes and huffed out a sigh that sounded almost like a laugh as he again reached into the depths of his bag, coming back up with another screwdriver and a small flashlight and a small roll of black tape. 

“I like to figure out how things work,” he explained, laying his tools out onto the dashboard like he was about to perform surgery. “And to do that, I usually have to take things apart.”

“Oh-kay…” T.J. dragged the word out, brow furrowing as Matt started fiddling with the console, reaching around the edges and running his long fingers into the nooks and crannies like he was looking for something. But you know what you’re doing, right? The words were on the tip of T.J.’s tongue, sudden nightmare visions of his beloved van laying in pieces, in its tragic final resting place in the liquor store parking lot. But before he could spit it out, Finley’s gaze flicked up to T.J.

“Don’t turn on the car until I tell you, okay?”

It was a weird feeling, having this skinny little dork telling him what to do. It made T.J.’s mouth go dry in much the same way it had last summer when he’d woken up the morning after swiping a pitcher full of margaritas from the backyard party his parents had been throwing for his dad’s law firm and splitting the drinks with Josh and Travis and Brent. He hadn’t been certain at the time, wanting to blame it on the pounding hangover his first attempt at drinking had brought upon him but worried that it might have something to do with the things he’d said to his crew that night. 

Things about Matt Finley who he remembered from middle school who’d be showing up as a freshman that year, and the fact that if the kid had been born a girl, he probably would’ve ended up pretty hot. 

Like, it’s embarrassing, sure, but even though he has no desire to bring it up again—and mercifully the Brent and Josh hadn’t gotten what he was saying at the time, just continued to list off all the girls in their school that _they_ thought were hot, as though that part of the conversation was the only part they’d heard T.J. say. And Travis, well, he’d given T.J. kind of a strange look while he was going on and on (and T.J. can feel his cheeks heat even now, months later, as he remembers just how long he talked about it) but hadn’t remembered anything about it the next morning—T.J. still stands by what he said. Or at least, what he’d thought as he’d stumbled over the words. Because the kid sitting next to him right now? With all the height and blond hair and weirdly delicate but killer cheekbones that half the girls at school would probably kill to have? Would probably have ended up being one of, if not _the_ hottest girl in school, had he, you know, been born a girl. Even with the dorky tendencies, and the loser best friend. Because even as a dude he was honestly kind of pre—

“T.J.?”

T.J. startled in his seat, shaking his head to clear it. 

“Yeah? What?”

Matt looked at him strangely, and then repeated, slowly, as if he wasn’t sure T.J. had heard him the first time, “don’t turn the car on until I tell you, okay? I don’t want to get shocked.”

Dumbly, T.J. nodded—he didn’t exactly trust his mouth right now, not with how dry it was—and yanked the keys out of the ignition, holding them up for Matt—and when exactly had he started thinking of the dork as “Matt”? He’d always been Finley, just like Beindorf had always been Beindorf—to see. Seemingly appeased, Matt nodded and turned back to what he was doing, leaving T.J. to grit his teeth and sink down in his seat as he turned to stare out the front window and tried not to watch too closely at what Matt was doing out of the corner of his eye. Hopefully, Matt would be able to figure out what was wrong fast, so they could get back on the road. After all, they had places to be. 

“So I can’t help but wonder,” Matt said, his voice surprisingly conversational as he undid a screw, and, reaching out to hand it to T.J., who took it in surprise, blinking at Matt in shock as the other boy’s fingers brushed against T.J.’s palm, dropped the screw into it. Matt apparently either didn’t realize what he’d just done or didn’t care. His eyes were still locked on his work as he popped the console open and all but reached his whole left arm inside, rooting around back there. “That you offered me a ride, but never asked where I live. And now we’re on the _opposite side of town_ …”

“So?” the word came out kind of strangled, but apparently Matt didn’t notice that either.

“ _So_ ,” Matt said, drawing his hand back and bringing with it a colorful handful of tangled wires, the sight of which made T.J. a bit nervous—what the hell was he doing letting this freshman dig around in his van like this?—but only seemed to make Matt focus even further. The boy furrowed his brow as he set his screwdriver in the cup holder and started sorting out the wires. “I’m guessing this has to do with you saying that you had a better idea, back at Grover’s. And that, for whatever reason, you need my help. Otherwise, you either would’ve dropped me off at home already. Or, you wouldn’t have offered me a ride in the first place.” Matt’s big-eyed gaze flicked back up to his. “Right?”

“You’re pr—” he swallowed suddenly, cutting himself off. “Pretty smart.” T.J. winced at his near-slip. _Get it together, man,_ he told himself. _He’s just a stupid freshman._  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Matt replied, like being called smart wasn’t so much a compliment as just a statement of fact. “So…” Matt looked down at the wires, and T.J. followed his gaze and realized that the rats-nest tangle wasn’t there anymore. Instead, Matt held a neat bundle in one hand and a few loose wires in the other, and he was examining those ones more closely. 

“My dad’s an asshole.” The words were tumbling out of T.J.’s mouth before he could stop them. 

Matt blinked up at him. “Um. Okay?”

T.J. gritted his teeth for a long second and then blew out a breath. Might as well get it out there. Because it wasn’t like Matt was just going to _help him kidnap his parents_ , not if _he didn’t know that’s what they were doing._

“He’s awful to my mom. And she just lets him walk all over her. It sucks.” Which was the understatement of the year, but really there was no way he could put it any better than that. He could mention his dad’s affairs, the way the man just talked over his wife like she didn’t matter, like he was somehow smarter than she was—which, he totally wasn’t, okay? T.J. knew smart, and his mom had always been way smarter than anyone gave her credit for, especially her husband—but what would be the point? Matt was either going to help him or he wasn’t. Tearing himself open like that and making himself vulnerable wasn’t going to make a difference one way or the other.  
  
“Are you worried they’re going to get divorced?”

T.J. scoffed. Because divorce was literally the last thing he was worried about. “Divorcing would require them to think something’s wrong. They both just…” he trailed off, letting his head thump back against the headrest. He felt a sharp bite to his palm, and when he looked down he realized he was squeezing his fist around the screws Matt had handed him hard enough to hurt. “I just want it to stop. If they get divorced, it would suck, yeah, but it’d probably still be better than just letting him be a jerk to her forever. My mom’s a good person, she doesn’t deserve that. I mean, it’d be great if they could work things out, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.” He scoffed. “Stupid huh? How I’d rather my family be a statistic than keep pretending that everything’s fine?”

“Eh, I dunno,” Matt said. “Being a statistic isn’t so bad.”

T.J. scowled. “What would you know about it?” His voice came out like a growl, but instead of drawing away at the sound of it like he had earlier, the corner of Matt’s mouth tilted up into something that looked almost like a smile. 

“My dad has been married seven times.”

T.J. blinked at him. Then he opened his mouth to respond. Then he closed it again because, for the first time in his life, he actually had no words.

When he looked up and saw T.J. doing his best impression of a fish, this time Matt did smile. “Yeah, trust me,” he said. “I _know_.”

“Seven times? _Seven_?” 

“Yup.”

_How was that even possible?_

“Is that even legal?” 

“Apparently.” Matt looked down at the last remaining wires in his hand, then reached out toward T.J. without even looking. For a split second, T.J. was _sure_ that Matt was trying to hold his hand. “Pocket knife.”

“What?”

“I need to borrow your pocket knife for a sec.” He said. And then, when T.J. didn’t respond, still caught flicking his gaze between Matt’s face, half-hidden behind his curtain of hair and his fine-boned hand, Matt looked up at him, expectation written all over his face. “Pocket knife?” He asked again. “I know you have one.”

Dumbly, T.J. nodded and reached into the pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out his swiss army knife, handing it over. 

“What are yo—” but before he could finish, Matt had flipped it open and was using the blade to cut the wires. Just… cut the wires. Like they weren’t attached to the most precious possession that T.J. owned. And here he was, just sitting here, _letting him do it._

What the hell was wrong with him?  
  
But before T.J. could try again to ask what he was doing, Matt started talking again. “When I was little I thought it was normal, you know? I thought that’s just how families worked. Every couple of years, my dad would find me a new mom, and then they’d start fighting, and then that one would leave, and then I’d get another one. It wasn’t until, like, the second grade that I realized that all the other kids still had the same moms they’d had in kindergarten and that _I_ was the weird one.”

“You’re still the weird one,” T.J. said, but the response was automatic, teasing almost. There was no heat behind it, and he felt his face heat as he realized that _Matt_ could tell because the other boy smiled back at him. 

“Trust me, I _know_ ,” he said, using the blade tip to strip the wires and then flipped the knife closed again. “It just kind of sucks after a while, knowing that everyone else has a mom, and you have something that everyone thinks should be just as good, but you can’t get close to her, because in a couple years she’ll be gone.” He took a deep breath and blew it out again, and that, right there, that little hesitation, was what did it. Because even though Matt’s voice was still high and cheery, he had to brace himself before continuing. That’s when T.J. knew, he just _knew_ that no matter how _fine_ Matt tried to make his home-life sound, he wasn’t okay with it. 

“I’m on my sixth mom,” Matt continued, “and none of them stick around after the divorce goes through.”

They sat there in silence, letting Matt’s words hang heavy between them as Matt started twisting wires together. And all the while, the plan T.J. had formed earlier, began to shift and grow in his mind, expanding into something new and unexpected. 

“You ever think about changing that?” He asked, watching as Matt tucked the wires back into the console and started snapping the cover back into place. 

“Hmmm?”

“Your dad’s married right now, right?” T.J. didn’t know for certain, but he’d seen a blonde woman dropping Matt off for school more than once. 

Distracted, Matt nodded. “Yeah, Louise. She’s nice. My brothers drive her bonkers, but she’s nice.” He paused. “It’ll suck when she goes.”  
  
“What if… what if she _didn’t have to_?”

Matt looked up at him, brow furrowing adorably yet again. 

“What do you mean?”

T.J. twisted in his seat so that he was facing Matt straight on. “Beindorf’s basement,” he said. “You help me get my parents down there, and I help you do the same.”

There was a long pause where Matt just looked at him, and for a moment T.J. was worried that Matt either hadn’t heard him, or the kid was trying to figure out how to escape through the van window to get away from the crazy person inside it. He watched, heart hammering way too loud in his chest as Matt pressed his lips together, staring at him.

“Turn the car on.”

T.J. blinked.

“What?”

“Turn the car on. I wanna see if it worked.”

Oh. The stereo. Right. Grimacing, T.J. stuck the key in the ignition and turned the van on. It roared to life, and so did the music. He looked over at Matt in surprise and watched as a slow smile spread across Matt’s face as he reached over and turned the tunes down to a dull roar. 

“Just so you know, your mechanic is trying to rip you off.” He poked at the buttons and dials, and for the first time since T.J. had owned the van, every single one appeared to be working. “It was just a wire with a fault in it. I took out the messed-up piece. Should work fine now.”

T.J. blinked at him. Tall, blond, weirdly pretty for a guy, and just fixed his van. Without him even asking him to. What the hell was he supposed to do with this?

“Do you actually have a plan, by the way? Or were we just going to ask them nicely?”

“What?”

“Our parents?” Matt prompted. “How are we supposed to get them down into the basement? I don’t know about you but mine won’t go willingly.”

T.J. stared at him. Blinked. Stared at him some more.

“Huh. I didn’t actually think of that.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty smart,” Matt said, and suddenly his smile wasn’t quite so wide. Did it look… almost… shy?

“Yeah, yeah,” T.J. said, trying to smother his own smile. “So what? Does that mean YOU have a plan?”

“That depends,” Matt said. He started picking up his tools and dropping them back into his backpack. Did he always keep his tools in his backpack? Were they just swimming around in there with his textbooks and pencils? Did he need some kind of toolkit? Should T.J. get him some kind of toolkit? “Do you have any money?

“What?” T.J.’s heart slammed against the inside of his ribcage at the sudden thought that he’d either said what he’d been thinking aloud, or that somehow Matt had, on top of everything else, _the power to read minds_?

But then Matt pointed out the windshield, and at first, T.J. thought he was pointing to the liquor store, but then he saw it. Tucked away in the corner of the plaza, that little rundown old hardware store. And suddenly, T.J. got it.

“You know what Matt? I like the way you think.”

And then he reached out and turned the engine off once more. After all, it just wouldn’t do to leave the van running. They had some shopping to do. 

_I wonder how much rope it’ll take to tie up four grown-ups?_ T.J. thought to himself, as he unbuckled his seatbelt, then shook the thought off, realizing that for once, he didn’t have to worry about it. Matt could figure it out. 

After all, he was ~~pretty~~

Pretty smart.


End file.
